by Nolon King
Jasper heard Calum squeeze past him and open his door.
Jasper sprang into action, coming at Calum from behind, shoving the chloroform rag tightly against his mouth and nose.
Calum struggled, banging Jasper hard into the rear of his van.
He elbowed him hard in the ribs and stomped on Jasper’s foot.
Despite the steel toe boots, Jasper held him tight.
He couldn’t let go.
Calum tried to scream.
That’s it, open up and breathe in, boy.
Calum went limp and slumped backward.
Jasper held the rag, long enough to make sure the man wasn’t faking it.
Once certain, he pulled Calum into the van.
Jasper was fifteen minutes away from the beachside parking lot when Jordyn appeared in the passenger seat.
“You can’t do this,” she pleaded.
Jasper slammed on the brakes, nearly losing control of the van and running off the road.
He stared at his dead daughter sitting in the seat beside him.
“No, no, you’re dead. You’re not here.”
“And yet, here I am. Maybe someone forgot to take their meds. Maybe you wanted to see me.”
“No,” he said, shaking his head, trying to remember the last time he’d taken his pills.
This morning?
“You’re not real.”
“Come on, Dad, admit it — you missed me.”
Jasper hadn’t seen Jordyn in six months, the longest she’d been gone since her death. He hadn’t seen her since Detective Mallory Black had asked him who he was talking to.
His delusion cracked.
And the aftermath had been hell, forcing Jasper to remember his daughter’s death. How she had died. He was forced to remember his illness. And visit his shrink. Get medicated again before he went off the deep end.
A car raced past them, its horn blaring.
Jasper had to get moving again before he drew attention from the authorities. If they pulled him over now, there was no way he could hide his racing heart, crazed thoughts, or the ghost in his passenger seat.
He reached into his pockets, even though he knew he hadn’t brought any pills.
“Come on, Dad, you don’t want me to go, do you?”
He looked at her, sitting there just as real as the road beneath him. He returned his eyes to the windshield, trying to straighten his thoughts enough so that he didn’t get lost.
What road am I looking to get off at?
He glanced back at Jordyn. Despite being a figment of his imagination, there was an odd comfort in seeing her again. It was bizarre to find comfort in a lie, but Jasper couldn’t help how he felt. Seeing her there, sitting in her jeans, black shirt and jacket, her hair colored purple under a black knit cap, smiling at him, she seemed so damned real. Hell, he could smell her shampoo.
Jordyn continued, “You can’t kill him.”
“Yes, I can.”
“If you kill him, you will get caught.”
“Nope. They’ll never find his body. They’ll think he took off.”
“Dad, you don’t really believe that they’ll stop looking for Calum Fucking Kozack, do you? Every department in the city, hell, in the state, will be looking for him.”
“They won’t find him. No body, no murder.”
“Maybe not, but they’ll be onto you. She’ll be onto you. How long do you think you can sneak around killing people with her watching?”
“Who?” he asked.
“That detective you saved. Mallory Black. She’s going to put two and two together, and when she does, she’s going to come for you.”
“Don’t you get it? I’m doing this for you?”
“For me?” Jordyn laughed. “For me?”
“Yes, for you. It’s his fault you’re dead. And he needs to pay. Don’t you want him to pay?”
“Not if it lands you in jail.”
“It won’t.”
“You’re not thinking clearly. You can only kill bad guys because you’re not connected to them. You do your homework. You don’t go after targets that’ll lead back to you. Like Calum will.”
“Someone has to stop him. He just got off again. How long do I just sit back and watch him ruin young women?”
“Not now, Dad. You need to wait for a better time.”
“There won’t be a better time. The hard part is done. He’s in the back of the van. I already committed a crime, Jordyn. Hell, I’d argue that me letting him go now is more likely to get my ass caught. The damage is done. The only way through it is to get through it.”
“No. You let him go now. Drive him back to his car, take his wallet or something and make it look like a robbery.”
“No.”
“Do this, and I’m leaving for good.”
He looked over at her expecting to see her pouty face, but she was staring at him, her eyes deadly serious.
“If you do this, I won’t come back. I know you think it’s the pills that kept me away, but it wasn’t. I left because I thought you needed time alone. But then I saw what you’re doing with that alone time, and I had to intervene before you screwed up your life for this piece of trash.”
“No. You’re not here. The pills have kept you away.”
“I know what your shrink thinks is wrong with you, but it isn’t that, Dad. I am here. But if you do this, I won’t be. And you’ll never see me again.”
Chapter 5 - Mallory Black
Mal slipped into one of the last pews in the Beacon Community Church just as the Narcotics Anonymous meeting was starting.
She felt like an imposter unworthy of sitting with the dozen or so others up front. It had been more than a month since her last meeting. She’d blown off her sponsor Mary’s calls. She hadn’t spoken to her ex-husband Ray since he’d gone with her to a meeting six months ago. His calls had been going straight to voicemail, too.
But, despite the missed meetings, Mal had been sober for six months, at least when it came to the pills.
And that was no small accomplishment.
As she sat in the back listening to the meeting, Mal didn’t feel like she belonged. She didn’t know any of the people up front, and most of them seemed to know each other well.
There were two NA meetings on any given day, with rotating locations. From what her sponsor had said, regulars broke down into two groups: location specific and those that went to many meetings, location agnostic. Both groups had people falling in and out over time as new users joined the fray. Some would relapse, some would return, but if you went enough, you eventually found your family.
A family where most of the others attended meetings and followed the Twelve Steps. But those steps were a large part of what kept Mal from becoming more involved.
Mal didn’t want to list all the people she’d wronged. That list was too long, and she had no idea where to start. And hell, most of the people were shit heels who didn’t even deserve her apology or the making of amends.
Another problematic part of the Twelve Steps was the whole belief in a higher power thing. Though some of the NA folks said that higher your power didn’t have to be God, or even spiritual. But you were expected to believe in something greater than yourself. Expected to surrender your life to a higher power, and let that power help you.
But there was no higher power.
There certainly wasn’t some omniscient God offering to help her, or any of the other poor wretches in the church. Hell, nothing she saw on the job — from drug addicts squandering their lives, to the murderers and abusers of women and children, to the absolute monsters like the man who opened fire at a baseball game that morning — offered any evidence of God, unless He was the cruelest of tricksters.
If Mal wanted something done she only had herself to count on. God wouldn’t punch the clock or catch the killers for her. He wouldn’t dull Mal’s craving for the pills, or bring her daughter, Ashley, back to life.
And where was God when her daughter’s murderer, P
aul Dodd, came back and kidnapped another little girl, Jessi Price? Where the hell was He when Paul was going to rape Jessi right in front of Mal?
Nowhere.
And it wasn’t God who kept her from pulling the trigger despite wanting vengeance for her daughter, and for Jessi.
It was her strength — a strength she had to dive deep to find. The kind of strength that more often than not felt like a flickering candle in the coldest rainstorm. The kind of strength she didn’t even know she had, and could only discover once she was already empty.
It had nothing to do with God.
No, it was Mal.
It was also human intervention, in the shape of a man whose name Mal didn’t know. But he wasn’t some fucking angel or messenger of God. He was a man. A hunter. Some crazy vigilante who tried to get Mal to murder Paul.
A woman in the front of the church started recounting her week, thanking God for His help getting through it without using. Anger coursed through Mal. She wasn’t even sure why she was so angry, but that didn’t dim her rage.
Was it anger at people believing in something that she no longer believed in?
Was it that they could so easily have faith while her capacity for hope had withered to memory?
Did Mal even want to believe?
Or was it that these people giving credit to a higher power simply didn’t deserve what they had? In many ways that abdication of personal responsibility felt to Mal like a future excuse in the making.
Well, obviously I gave in, I’m only human. I need that Higher Power to help me!
Needing a Higher Power was admitting that you couldn’t do it on your own. Embracing a weakness that you didn’t need to accept. It was buying into someone else’s bullshit. Maybe they need someone or something greater than them, but Mal certainly didn’t.
Fuck that. Don’t try to tell me what I need!
Mal didn’t need some invisible man in the sky to help her do anything. She’d gotten this far on her own, and every day and every battle came down to her being strong enough to fight. And at least if she failed, she’d place the blame on the person who deserved it: herself.
She stood from the pew and made her way out of the church, not even looking to see if anyone had noticed.
She pushed through the front door and bumped into the last person she wanted to run into.
Ray smiled. “Hey, didn’t expect to see you here.”
“Yeah, I’m, uh, just leaving.”
They stood in awkward silence outside the church, both dancing around an awkward moment from six months ago. He’d come to her hotel room after she’d been abducted by Paul Dodd. Mal had needed a friend because she was feeling so damned lost after the ordeal.
One thing led to another, and they kissed.
It might have led to more, but Ray stopped it.
And then he left.
Mal was more than alone. She felt stupid and embarrassed. She’d almost slept with him. Yes, he was her ex-husband, but still, it was wrong. He was with Julie. It would be one thing if they both suddenly realized how much they loved one another. If they were somehow able to surmount the pain of losing a child and all that had followed. If they were in that place, maybe she wouldn’t have felt shitty about it. But this wasn’t that. Mal wasn’t sure what it was, except not right.
Mal decided to call her sponsor and attend a meeting that night. It was the last time she’d used. She turned her weakest moment into one of her strongest. But now, seeing Ray after all this time, Mal was that desperate idiot in the hotel room, making a move and getting rebuffed.
“What are you doing here? Are you—?”
“No, I’m not drinking again. Just … every now and then I need to remember the reasons why.”
Alcohol was Ray’s drug of choice after Ashley’s death, but he preferred NA because he felt the AA meetings were a bit too boisterous for his introverted personality. Mal had a feeling that one of his co-workers at the Chronicle was probably in AA, and that was the real reason he avoided the place, but she never questioned him.
They stood in the awkward moment. Mal’s eyes flicked to her car.
But Ray wasn’t moving from the doorway. He seemed to be working up the courage to speak. She hoped he wouldn’t mention their last encounter.
God, no. Anything but that.
She saw something else in his eyes and caught a whiff of his breath.
“Are you okay?”
He looked at her, then away. He sighed. “I’m not drinking again, but I did have a few drinks tonight. Julie and I got into it. And I just had to … well, get a drink. I was heading home and saw—”
Saw my car?
“The church, and decided maybe it’d be better to come here than go home.”
Mal felt even more uncomfortable, unsure of what to say. She didn’t want to be involved in whatever was happening between Ray and Julie. But at the same time, he was probably shy of friends he could talk to. He had a few at the paper, and that was more than her, but still, Ray looked like he needed a friend. She wondered if she should go inside the church with him, or if it’d be better to go somewhere else?
She hated the idea of going back inside, especially after having just left. Mal moved out of his way. “Well, don’t let me stop you.” Immediately regretting how that came out, she added, “Did you want someone to talk to? I mean, I’m not sure if your ex-wife is the ideal person to help you handle problems with your girlfriend, but … I’m here.”
“No, I couldn’t do that,” he said, breaking away from her eyes. “You have enough on your plate.”
Another moment of awkward silence.
Mal could tell that he didn’t want to go in the church any more than she wanted to stay in there. “Do you wanna grab a coffee? We can both bitch about our days.”
Ray laughed.
His eyes were slightly wet, but there was also a spark — the one she sometimes used to see when he stared into her eyes on a lazy Sunday morning. A spark she hadn’t seen in a long time.
“Okay,” he said.
“I’m driving.”
They sat in a booth in the back of Morningstar Diner, Ray slowly eating eggs and home fries while Mal nursed a cup of coffee.
“You sure you don’t want any?” Ray was already looking a hell of a lot better than he had outside the church. Some food in his belly, a little less intoxicated, and not quite as awkward. More like the Old Ray.
“Nah. I had a burger with Mike after work.”
“You working that baseball shooter case?”
“Yeah. Were you there?”
“They had me in Jacksonville shooting a surfing charity event.”
“Be glad,” she said. “It was awful.”
While most news photographers would champ at the bit to cover a shooting spree or other tragedy, Ray never had that particular instinct. He preferred a typical puff piece or local youth sports. He had shot some tragic scenes, including the harrowing aftermath of an accident on I-95, but those moments always left him rattled for days.
He considered it a personal weakness to his career, particularly when newsrooms were shedding skilled photographers and handing reporters iPhones to shoot with. But Mal had always seen it as strength. He saw humanity at its worst and still displayed its best, whether that meant a photo of a heroic firefighter carrying a child out of a house or a father and daughter at a Daddy Daughter dance at school. Ray had an eye for moments that touched her soul in the best possible way. The news needed more of that, less of the grim reality that threatened to drown the planet in sorrow and darkness.
“So, how are you holding up? You think the coach did it?”
“I’m okay. As for the coach, I dunno.”
Ray looked at Mal as if trying to determine if she didn’t know, or couldn’t say. One good thing about not being married anymore was avoiding conversations like this.
“You know I can’t talk about details.”
“Right,” he said, shaking his head. “Sorry.”
; In the ensuing moment of silence, everything unsaid hung like a brewing storm in the air. Mal wasn’t sure how to stay in safe waters, especially if what had almost happened between them was in any way responsible for the rift between him and Julie.
“So, um … tonight. What happened?”
He was about to plop a fork full of eggs into his mouth, but instead he dropped the utensil, took a sip of his coffee and said, “You sure you want to hear this? Isn’t it a bit weird?”
“We’re friends, Ray. That’s never going to change. I’m here to talk, even if it’s just to tell you that you’re being an idiot.”
He smiled, wide enough that he probably wanted to laugh.
She was intentional in her use of “friends” so he wouldn’t get the wrong idea. Wouldn’t think that she was trying to seize on a moment, or that there was any open door to that part of her life. Yes, she’d been weak at the hotel, and for a minute there she might have taken him back if he’d asked. But that was her being vulnerable, and Mal wasn’t ever going to let anyone see her that helpless again.
“Well, things haven’t been going well between Julie and me.”
“Okay, elaborate.”
He sighed. “Ever since this whole Paul Dodd thing, I haven’t been able to get him out of my head.”
“What do you mean?”
“For a long time, we didn’t know who killed Ashley. And the not knowing created this hole inside that almost crushed me. Almost made me start drinking again.”
He looked down at the table, dark hair falling over his eyes.
Mal gripped her mug tightly in her hands, even though the coffee was gone.
“But Julie saved me. Pulled me out of the darkness, kept me from going off the deep end. Helped me stay sober. After Ashley died, I almost fell off the wagon. I blamed myself. I thought if we hadn’t gotten divorced, if I’d still been a part of the family, maybe it never would’ve happened. But Julie helped me through. Helped me fill that new hole with something other than guilt and pain.”
Mal had to fight the old anger starting to rise. Had to resist the urge to say, How nice it must’ve been to have someone help you through it. I tried to help you, tried so many times, but you pushed me away. You wouldn’t let me.